Covid-19 cases decline in last 7 days, govt focus on states with high caseload
The Centre has said that the number of cases have plateaued and decreased in the last week. It also highlighted that the positivity rate has gone below 20 per cent.
At a media briefing by the Union health ministry on Saturday, joint secretary Lav Agarwal said that the positivity rate – proportion of samples that return positive for Covid-19 – dipped from 21.9% last week to 19.8% in the May 8-14 period. A dropping positivity rate is indicative of slowing of the spread of infection.
Government figures show that the number of active cases, which were touching 40 lakh, has now gone down to around 36-37 lakh. The health ministry officials called it a “big achievement” due to more recoveries and the case fatality rate remaining stable.
For the fourth time in the last five days, India’s daily Covid-19 recoveries outnumbered new cases on Saturday. The national recovery rate stands at 83.83 per cent.
Major reasons for the drop in cases of Covid-19 are the strict curbs announced by various states governments and inoculation of more people in the ongoing vaccination drive. Joint secretary Lav Agarwal said that a total of 18.04 crore vaccine doses have been administered so far in the country. This includes 13.74 crore people above the age of 45 years, 1.62 crore healthcare workers, 2.25 crore frontline workers and 42.59 lakh people between the age of 18-44 years who have received their first dose.
The government is now focussing on those states which have high number of active cases. According to health ministry data, there are 11 states which have over one lakh active cases and 17 have less than 50,000 cases. High caseload states like Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh have reported a decline in the number of active cases in the last one week, whereas the situation in Tamil Nadu remains an area of concern due to rise in the number of active cases in the same period.
On May 3, the active cases were 17.13 per cent of the total caseload, which has declined to 15.1 per cent and recovered cases stand at 83.8 per cent, according to government data.
The national mortality rate currently stands at 1.09 per cent, according to Union health ministry.
(With inputs from agencies)
